Ben on Film - ‘I Am Legend' writer turned ordinary into gold

Wednesday

Jul 3, 2013 at 2:36 PM

Richard Matheson died quietly June 23 at the age of 87

By Ben SteelmanBen.Steelman@StarNewsOnline.com

Richard Matheson, who died quietly June 23 at the age of 87, was not exactly a household name. For close to two decades, though, he was arguably Hollywood's top idea man.Stephen King – creator of "Under the Dome," not to mention "Carrie," "Cujo," "The Shining" and so much more – wrote on his website that Matheson was the writer "who influenced me the most." Ray Bradbury called him one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.George Romero said that his 1969 movie "Night of the Living Dead" was a salute to Matheson.So, why am I writing about him in a movie column? Here's why:Matheson's 1954 novel, "I Am Legend," was made into three different movies: "The Last Man on Earth" in 1964 with Vincent Price, "The Omega Man" in 1971 with Charlton Heston and, of course, "I Am Legend" in 2007 with Will Smith.Another novel, "The Shrinking Man," became one of the most popular drive-in sci-fi movies of the 1950s, "The Incredible Shrinking Man" (1957).A Matheson short story, "Duel," about a man being menaced on a lonely road by a sinister truck, was turned into a memorable TV movie starring Dennis Weaver and directed by this new kid named Steven Spielberg. The success of "Duel" convinced studio execs that Spielberg was ready to graduate from episodic TV and could be trusted with a hot property, the film version of Robert Benchley's best seller "Jaws."Spielberg, not surprisingly, thinks Matheson ought to be ranked alongside Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov.A short list of Matheson concepts expanded to the big screen include "The Legend of Hell House" (1975), "Somewhere in Time" with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour (1980, based on his novel "Bid Time Return"), "What Dreams May Come" with Robin Williams (1998), "Stir of Echoes" with Kevin Bacon (1999) and 2011's "Real Steel."Matheson, who moved to California in 1951, was also a prolific screenwriter, often adapting his own works, sometimes under a pseudonym. For Roger Corman, he churned out a string of scripts based on Edgar Allan Poe stories – "House of Usher" (1960), "The Pit and the Pendulum" (1961) and "The Raven" (1963), not to mention the under-appreciated little horror spoof "A Comedy of Terrors" (1963).It could be argued that Richard Matheson kept Vincent Price employed through the '60s. For Samuel Z. Arkoff, he also wrote the adaptation of Jules Vernes' "The Master of the World" (1961), also starring Price.Some of Matheson's best screen work, though, was for TV. For the original run of "Star Trek," he wrote the fan-favorite episode "The Enemy Within," in which a transporter accident brings in a different Captain Kirk from another dimension, while OUR Kirk winds up somewhere else.Matheson also penned more than a dozen episodes for "The Twilight Zone." One, "Steel," a rewrite of one of Matheson's own short stories, involved a broken-down fight manager (Lee Marvin) in a near future where boxing is done by robots. (This was later recycled as "Real Steel" with Hugh Jackman.)His most famous "Twilight Zone," however, has to be "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," starring William Shatner again as a man recovering from a nervous breakdown who takes an airline flight. The man looks out his cabin window and sees a monster, a gremlin, ripping the plane's wing apart. No one else sees the gremlin – and no one will believe him, since he's nuts, of course. Once you've seen it, the premise sticks in your mind – one reason that "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" has been referenced and spoofed in films from "Airplane!" to the second "Madagascar."In a way, that was the secret of Matheson's work. As Stephen King pointed out, he set his scary and fantastic tales in familiar, everyday American scenes in which the familiar suddenly becomes alien, strange and even threatening.Matheson found twists to the familiar. Watching an old "Dracula," he wondered, if one vampire is scary, how bad would a horde of vampires be? Hence, "I Am Legend." Another time, he watched the forgettable 1953 musical "Let's Do It Again," in which Aldo Ray and Ray Milland switch hats, neither of which fits. Hmmm, Matheson wondered, what if your own hat suddenly didn't fit – a meditation that led to "The Shrinking Man."A glance at a poster of the turn-of-the-century actress Maude Adams made Matheson wonder if people could fall in love, separated by decades, and yet somehow connect. Result: "Somewhere in Time."A World War II veteran, Matheson was born in New Jersey and grew up in Brooklyn, selling his first story, at the age of 8, to the Brooklyn Eagle. His parents divorced when he was 8, and Matheson grew up with his mother, whom he recalled as being "very distrustful of the outside world."A little of that, apparently, rubbed off on Matheson – and movie fans are richer as a result.